I went away for a couple of days and when I came back, turning on my PC gave me a really weird problem. It wouldn't pick up an address from DHCP and kept choosing a 169.* address which isn't valid for my LAN. After the usual things of renewing the lease, assigning a static address, trying a different cable and switch port, deleting the NIC driver etc, I still had no joy, but other PCs on the LAN were fine. Some Googling found a few more suggestions, one of which was to power the PC off, boot it with no LAN cable, then insert the cable after it had finished booting. That worked! Bizarre.

ASUS have a Mona Lisa of motherboards in the lobby of their headquarters in Taiwan. Asus designers reportedly dreamed up this Mona Lisa. The work represents two things: a reminder of the technology that Asus built its fortune on and the company’s ethos to encourage and support “any kind of crazy ideas.”

Rezin noticed that YouTube will be getting high-def 1080p soon. He also said, then, that YouTube stores all video it receives at the resolution it's uploaded at. So when YouTube ads a resolution option, as it did then and is doing now, it simply needs to re-encode videos for the new player, not get new raw content.

Wessam spotted this explanation of computation theory aimed at educating lawyers. It's freaking gargantuan so I haven't read it. Also, it's now clear that just as you wouldn't go into litigation without a lawyer, if you are wise, because that is their area of expertise, lawyers also shouldn't assume they understand software and patents and how they relate unless they get help from technology experts who know how software and computers, and the underlying math, really work.

The Large Hadron Collider has suffered a fair few setbacks, but will apparently fire up again this week. Right now, particles are circulating through six of the eight sectors of the LHC’s 17-mile track, and the last two sectors will be turned on in the coming week. If the machine doesn’t break down again, physicists will finally have their long-awaited collider and, hopefully, start answering those nagging questions about the universe.

A few people sent in this story of someone crashing his Bugatti Veyron into a lake. Driving weather's been perfect in southeast Texas lately, so it's anyone's guess how this genius skipped his million-dollar-plus Bugatti Veyron off the road and right into a freaking lake. Despite the cost, Veyrons certainly aren't amphibious. Video of the crash here, discussion here.

Apparently NVIDIA are not blocking Lucid Hydra after all. Brown contacted us earlier today and informed us that Nvidia "had nothing to do with MSI's decision to postpone its Big Bang Fuzion motherboard." Furthermore, he affirmed that Nvidia would not place any technical roadblocks in Lucid's path, stating: "As I mentioned, we welcome Lucid to the market and have no intention of blocking them with our drivers, etc."

TheInq reckon the RIAA has forced a small town to shut down its free WiFi service, thanks enigma. Imagine its shock when the MPAA forced the town to shut down its entire free municipal WiFi network because of a single instance of a single user illegally downloading a copyrighted movie.

Byteside have two new episodes, with the Games Show: On Games it's the uber-elite world of Pro-gaming, topics covered include: pro-gamer training tips, how to break into the big league, why is it all dominated by Counter-Strike and Starcraft and the perils of a pro-gaming career. And the Tech Show: Topics covered include: the evolution and future of overclocking, hot hardware, the modding scene, extreme components and cooling.

Once again we're having an OCAU Secret Santa. If you want to get involved, sign up by the 30th of November.